Minister for Broadband Discusses the NBN at CeBIT

Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, was at the CeBIT 2012. As expected, Conroy gave a talk, with the National Broadband Network program the center of the discussion.

Conroy provided an outline as to the strategies and platforms of the government for the NBN. He also provided a clear look as to what the government has achieved in the last year in harmony with the National Digital Economy Strategy.

Conroy announced that regional Australia stands to gain a lot of benefits from the NBN program, as the department that he’s heading has just given the go-ahead signal to provide funds for the Local Government Program. This means that the first seven projects will provide assistance to local councils so they can develop and improve online services provided by the NBN.

These services can be duplicated and can be done on a bigger scale. This led to Conroy to announce that they’re already seeing the potentials of improving the service as the NBN program is rolled out to the local government services.

He also announced a milestone wherein they overcame a huge challenge in the launching of the NBN Regional Legal Assistance Program. This is a program that allows providers of legal assistance services to ask for assistance when it comes to funding so they can try NBN-based programs that aim to improve their legal assistance services.

He also shared reports that show that Internet economy in the nations included in G20 will grow as much as twice between the years of 2010 and 2016. In the next four years, he calculated that this will mean $20 billion for the Australian economy.

While he acknowledged that these numbers will be dependent on the NBN, there are other things that will come into play like an improved workforce, infrastructure and modernization. NBN Co is already building the needed infrastructure and they’re also putting together the needed strategies to realise Australia’s potential to be among the leading nations in digital economies by the year 2020.